Biopolitics Reading Group notes 2

Over the fold are my brief notes on Foucault’s Governmentality lecture for the biopolitics reading group. I am the discussant this week so here is my point for discussion.

The question I raise is regarding the movement of what Foucault ultimately calls ‘interests’ there are two parts to this. The first traces the idea of interest. The second argues that there must be a concept not dissimilar to Weber’s charisma or at least one that is attentive to the affects of governance is needed.

Across the three main problematics of government — prince/sovereign, family/economy, statistical/population — the notion of ‘interest’ changes. In the first instance it is the interests of the prince at stake, of how he reinforces, strengthens and protects his relations to his principality. In the second example ‘interest’ is not explicitly mentioned by Foucault. However, the notion of the wisdom of the governor indicates that the relations between men and things — to be arranged to a convenient end — relies on a certain kind of ‘objective knowledge’. Part of this objective knowledge must be of the ‘interests’ of the privileged members of the ‘household’/state. In the last case Foucault explicitly mentions ‘interests’ as the ‘end’ of government:

â€œInterest at the level of the consciousness of each individual who goes to make up the population, and interest considered as the interest of the population regardless of what the particular interests and aspirations may be of the individuals who compose it, this is the new target and the fundamental instrument of the government of the population: the birth of a new art, or at any rate of a range of absolutely new tactics and techniquesâ€ (100).

Clearly then in representative governments which only need to be elected by a certain number of the population to hold power, then the unethical government party will privilege those interests of a given number of the population which will ensure them re-election. This is a composite of the prince’s transcendental political interests (of the political party) combined with the paternalistic interets of the nation-household (of the privileged population) combined with the segmented population management of statisitical governance. This puts a different spin on the meaning of ‘right’ in the sense of Perriere’s dictum:

â€œ[G]overnment is the right disposition of things, arranged so as to lead to a convenient endâ€ (93)

The ‘rightness’ of the disposition should be convenient so as to ensure re-ellection of the political party, hence the interests championed by this party will be of a ‘rightness’ that is convenient for a relatively limited population. What happens to the rest of the population? Is this not the essence of the hegemonic project? What I find interesting is that Government implies a relation of futurity in that the ‘right disposition’ is of the present, but the ‘convenient end’ is of the future. In the popularist mode of hegemonic governance the ‘right disposition’ is an affective disposition that flares up or manifests itself. Surely ‘security’ is the best example of this affective relation of futurity, one that is necessarily powered by the anxiety of large populations? So hegemony is no longer the art of winning consent, but the governmental task is to produce anxiety. Anxiety could be new charisma… But there is also the rough correlate to the anxiety-resource of security in the actual charismatic relation required for a reactionary nationalism. The second minor point is that the media is entirely complicit in this production of privileged and segmented population groups which are used as commercial resources.
Governmentality

Problematic of government â€“ government as event.
Discursive event of this government-problematic can be traced across three main stages:
1) advice to the prince (87-91)
2) economy of the family (91-96)
3) statistics of populations science (96-104)

My question is regarding â€˜interestsâ€™?

Advice to the prince

Machiavelliâ€™s The Prince is used as a programmatic text (88), ie like Benthamâ€™s panopticon.

The â€˜princeâ€™ is staked out not as a person but as a diagrammatic sovereign and governmental function: â€œthe prince stood in relation of singularity and externality, and thus of transcendence, to his principalityâ€ (89-90).

The princeâ€™s interests are in reinforcing, strengthening and protecting the principality. Principality is defined by his â€œrelation with what he owns, with the territory he has inherited or acquired, and with his subjectsâ€ not the â€œobjective ensemble of its subjects and territoryâ€ (90).

Economy of the family

There is a multiplicity and immanence of forms of government which distinguishes them from the transcendent singularity of Machiavelliâ€™s prince (91).

The art of government is essentially concerned with answering the question of how to introduce economy, as how to introduce the attention of the father towards his family into the management of the state (92). Family should be understood in terms of household. (sidenote regarding the household and Derridaâ€™s work on arkheion as ancient greek household.)

Introduces notion from Perriere: â€œgovernment is the right disposition of things, arranged so as to lead to a convenient endâ€ (93). Government has to do with a â€œcomplex composed of men and thingsâ€ (93). Gives example of the ship (93-94). He simply states that to govern â€œmeans to govern thingsâ€ (94).

The goal is not to some common good, but â€œto an end which is â€˜convenientâ€™ for each of the things that are to be governedâ€ (95). This is facilitated by not â€œimposing law on men, but of disposing things: that is to say, of employing tactics rather than laws, and even of using laws themselves as tactics â€“ to arrange things in such a way that, through a certain number of means, such and such ends may be achievedâ€ (95).

What is required to govern is a â€œknowledge of things, of the objectives that can and should be attained, and the disposition of things required to reach themâ€ (96).

Statistics of populations

â€œ[T]he art of government, instead of seeking to found itself in transcendental rules [ie the prince], a cosmological model or a philosophico-moral ideal [ie the family], must find the principles of its rationality in that which constitutes the specific reality of the state [ie statistics]â€ (97).

He raises the example of mercantilism. â€œMercantilism might be described as the first sanctioned efforts to apply this art of government at the level of political practicesâ€ (97), it is the â€œfirst rationalization of the exercise of power as a practice of governmentâ€ (97). What emerges is â€œa savoir of the state that can be used as a tactic of governmentâ€ (97-98) Savoir refers to the form of knowledge that serves as the discursive condition for connaissance.

Population-statistics emerged as a form of government because â€œthe framework of sovereignty was too large, too abstract and too rigidâ€ (prince) while the â€œtheory of government suffered from its reliance on a model which was too thin, too weak and too insubstantialâ€ (family) (98).

Whereas statistics had previously worked within the administrative frame and thus in terms of the functioning of sovereignty, it now gradually reveals the population has its own regularities, its own rate of deaths and diseases, its cycle of scarcity, etc (99). Population comes to be the ultimate end goal of government. (100)

It was through the development of a science of government that the â€˜economyâ€™ shifted to a plane we recognise as the economic of today (99)

With the emergence of population that status of the family shifts from being the model of government to becoming an element internal to population a â€˜privileged segmentâ€™ (see also ATP D&G). Family becomes a tool of government. (99-100)

â€œInterest at the level of the consciousness of each individual who goes to make up the population, and interest considered as the interest of the population regardless of what the particular interests and aspirations may be of the individuals who compose it, this is the new target and the fundamental instrument of the government of the population: the birth of a new art, or at any rate of a range of absolutely new tactics and techniquesâ€ (100).